Eaglet
by FroggyFeet
Summary: "Join me. Fight the Borgia, become an assassin." The citizen smiled like a wild animal, "I thought you'd never ask."
1. Chapter 1

Ezio liked to think himself a logical man.

One that didn't make stupid mistakes due to impulse and irrationality. But if he said that, he would be a rotten liar. Everything he had up until he hit thirty was built on crazy hormones and insane plans. Even after that he still did stupid things that gave the Brotherhood kittens. But it was at the age of 41 that he made his biggest mistake.

The citizen was insane. Clearly. He was stood on the edge of a cliff in the Antico district of Roma, brown hair almost black in the dying sun. His regular-John-Jack-or-Harry garb stood out like a sore thumb in amongst the Guardia's bloody red uniforms, silver armour glinting like teeth. It looked almost like a regular road in Roma, the guards pestering an innocent man, but this time there was a clear difference. The innocent was dangling a guard off the edge of the cliff by his collar, silent as death himself. He didn't yell at the swarm of guards to get away, to leave before he threw his hostage to their doom. He stood silently, letting the threat linger in the air like smoke.

His sword was at his side, and his legs were spread into an easy defensive position. Strong, almost natural. He had some sort of training; that was for definite. But nobody could teach his absolution. And looking back, Ezio would have said this is what prompted the decision to save the citizen. He would be the last recruit. One of the Guards stepped forwards, and the citizen's eyes glinted. The hostage flew like a rock.

The five other guards advanced, and Ezio moved fast enough to make lightning blanch in jealousy. The citizen sent his sword through a guard's chest, leaning close enough to feel the man's dying breath, before he tore his blade from the ribcage and sent his victim to the dirt. Ezio outshone him like a supernova outshone a firefly. Three guards hit the dirt before they blinked. Ezio's twin blades met two throats, his boot meeting a third spine. The last man fell to the citizen's blade, after he sent him to his knees with a cheeky kick to the balls. He ripped his sword from the guard's throat, before he stopped stock still to stare at Ezio, a blinding angel with the sun at his back.

"Salve," the angel murmured.

"Buona sera," the citizen nodded.

"Are you alright?"

"Si, grazie."

Ezio nodded once, and the silence returned. The citizen stared at him, eyes wandering over the assassin whites before he smiled briefly and wiped his sword on a hastily drawn handkerchief and slid back into the scabbard at his hip. The man bowed slightly, before he straightened and waved over his shoulder. "Arrivederci, assassino."

"Wait…!"

The stranger stopped, and turned slightly to look Ezio in the face. "What? I said thank you."

"Join me. Fight the Borgia, become an assassin."

The citizen smiled like a wild animal, "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

><p>Making Bastiano Pulci into an assassin was like making a cat vomit up gold. Hard, but not necessarily impossible. They made a goose poop gold in some odd fairytale or other. The man was just like Ezio. Flamboyant, stupid, and incredible. He made the other recruits look like the novices they were, he outshone even the veteran novice Raffaele in wit. What he lacked in assassin experience he made up for with his head. He didn't just do what he was told, he used his initiative. It got him a head above the rest. The first day was interesting, to be frank. However high the testosterone ran there were never any real casualties, and Bastiano made friends easily. The novices were infected by his mirth, and found themselves competing against each other, making teams between themselves and trying to best each other. They turned it into a game.<p>

When he put Bastiano on his first mission, the boy shone.

* * *

><p>The last surviving French outpost lingered like a turgid spot on the face of a teenager, glowing an ominous yellow in the night. Ezio and La Volpe stood at the base of the tree line circling the encampment, eyes bright in the dark. The five novices they were overseeing dissipated like spectres in the watery moonlight, completely surrounding the sleeping enemy. The camp was moderate size, with seven tents for the men, including the captain. That meant at least twenty, including the five archers patrolling some hastily built scaffolding erected in the middle of the camp.<p>

The seven novices first came up with a game plan.

"First, we are gonna split up and come at them from all sides. Set the tents on fire and kill the captain." Emiliana gestured to the camp fortifications she drew in the dirt at their feet, elaborating where the guards patrolled and where they slept.

"If we do that," Bastiano frowned, "they'll cut us down like lambs. We gotta be sneakier than that. There are more of them than us; we will get overwhelmed if we go for a frontal attack."

"Fine, Pulci. What do you suggest?"

Bastiano grinned, "We're gonna get our freak on!"

* * *

><p>Upon closer inspection, Bastiano getting his "freak on" meant they were to run, silently around the French camp like ghosts. They destroyed the guns, hid the weapons and slit the throats of the sentries as they slept. They threw the bodies out into the nearby roads where they could be seen by regular guards and flitted back to the shadows. A scare tactic, for later skirmishes. Then, one of the novices woke up a guard, and the man tottered out and rang the alarm. The five remaining guards looked rather pale when they realised they were outmanned, the others slaughtered in their beds, standing in their underwear and staring at a group of assassino. Not just the one. Four assassins, each rolling their arms or casually leaning on weapons. One even settling on the log between the dead sentries, warming his hands by the fire. The assassins moved in a flurry of fabric, and only a single terrified soldier was able to run. He took off screaming in barely his trousers, stumbling over the corpses that the novices had littered the road with, a recruit leapt out of an idling cart of hay and drove the hidden blade deep into his diaphragm.<p>

The recruits gathered in the light of the dying campfire, and Ezio and La Volpe emerged from the dark, quietly applauding. It was that day that Bastiano made his running for the place as Ezio's right hand man evident. It was that day he and Rafaele became best friends. And the day that Ezio became privy to an old emotion. One that had followed him like a spectre for years.

Good, honest curiosity.

The next day posters clogged the streets, covering nearly every spare wall with assassin likenesses, white robes and red sashes. Ezio looked to La Volpe, and the thief nodded. He clapped his hands, and Ezio was rather glad that he had what he deemed a much more individualised signal like the Eagle's call. The thieves moved like mice, fast and skittering. They vaulted and shifted through the watery morning light, taking posters with them. The torn papers fell to the muck like feathers in their wake. Ezio nodded at the fox for his theatricality, as well as his efficiency. The fox smiled.

"Did you find out anymore about my novice?"

"Pulci?"

"Si."

"Yes. He is a simple man from a smithy's background. Nothing special. He had two sisters, but one is dead and the other is hidden away in the Antico district. Last I heard, she was entering the Order in the shape of a courtesan. Asking Lady Claudia would be your best bet. If she is anything like her brother, you want her in assassin Whites rather than the drabs of an escort."

"Dearly noted."


	2. Chapter 2

Claudia blinked at Ezio. She didn't give him a longwinded report on the girl, nor the novice. She didn't ask a plethora of questions. She just blinked at him, incredulous and almost annoyed. "Isn't this _your_ job?"

Ezio frowned.

"Can't you just ask this novice of yours? You should do well to get to know each of them. They're fighting for you and your creed, after all. The least you can do is know them outside of statistics and invasion plans." She looked away then, and Ezio felt the bubble of an old argument, nothing to do with his novices.

So he did what all men do when threatened by a strong woman.

He ran away.

* * *

><p>He resorted to tailing his novice, watching the Pulci weave through he crowds on one of Machiavelli's errands. The boy was tasked with following Michelletto, and although Ezio trusted him and the Maestro was doing nothing wrong, he still hid amongst the courtesan's skirts when the boy turned around.<p>

The boy shrugged, sidled away and eventually, he found the greasy man by the huge gates that led out of the city. Ezio was letting the details float over his head, mind still clouded with all of La Volpe's accusations against Machiavelli. It was a hefty thing, especially since they were standing on eggshells with the Borgia anyway. They needed to stand together, not squabble amongst themselves. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and when he looked up, Bastiano was staring him in the face.

Ezio refrained from squeaking like a girl.

"Cesare."

The boy pointed, and indeed, the Borgia leader was pacing infront of a blindfolded and bound man who was shaking like a leaf. Then Micheletto swept behind him and strangled the poor fool. Cesare walked out of the gates, and Micheletto snarled some orders. The guards picked the body from the dirty and hauled it away, while the murderer thundered away on his horse.

"Come."

Ezio leapt from the rooftop, fluttered across the gap between two buildings and landed firmly in a black stallion's saddle. The brown horse at it's side whined, but Bastiano cooed at it, before they fell into step a few metre's from the target's back. "I never knew you had a sister."

Bastiano threw a glance to Ezio, "Neither I you, Maestro."

"So, when were you going to introduce us?"

The boy laughed, "So you can seduce her?"

Ezio frowned, "No! I just liked to know more about my recruits."

"Then why not Rafaelle's daughter? Or Emilianna's brother? Why centre your attention on me, Maestro?" Bastiano grinned, and Ezio looked away.

"Keep your head in the game, kid. Or you'll have more than just _my_ attention."

With a thunder of hooves, they followed.

When they encountered the last set of guards that they were to slaughter for costumes, they hit a snag. It was a big place, and it was crawling with guards and civilians. Ezio simply told Bastiano to guard the horses. The boy laughed at him, and Ezio had to order him to stay put. Then he followed Micheletto inside. The thirty guards that seemed to zone in on him and the dead men he had looted was at worst, an irritation. He drew his blade, but he needn't have. The guards charged him. Past a haystack.

The haystack bulged and exploded. And for an instant, the incredible image of his recruit yelling 'boo' and waving his arms like a ghoul was imprinted into his vision. Bastiano's blade was like lightning, cutting down two before the others had even drawn their blades. Two other recruits swooped onto the scene, finishing the rest. Rafaelle laughed and tugged down the scarf across his mouth, Emiliana following suit by fluidly sheathing her blade.

Ezio felt a tiny swell of pride in his babies.

* * *

><p>Ezio walked down a tiny alley in one of the poorer districts of Roma. The plan went well, they saved the actor, he had managed to stop La Volpe from murdering Machiavelli, and things were quiet for once. But as they say, this was the calm before the storm. And how right this "they" was.<p>

The courtesan had been gutted. Like a boar at a party.

Another was crouched over the body, sobbing. Her makeup was smeared, black lines down her face like clawed marks. She looked up. "Kill him. That bastardo dottore!"

Her mouth trembled, and she stood, pointing down the alley. "Go destroy him. Avenge my poor Luchia." She crumbled then, eyes returning to the mutilated courtesan. Bastiano bristled at his shoulder. And they ran.

The courtesans pointed them out the way.

When the black robed dottore turned, beak swivelling towards them, he broke into a run. Bastiano was on him like a falcon hit a field mouse. Hard and devastating. The beak went flying, robes were torn. And when he stood, black strips and swathes of fabric were draped across Bastiano's Assassin whites, and Ezio saw something akin to a mirror image, or a phantom of the past, flickering through the boy.

He used to look just like that when he first pulled on Giovanni's armour.

He looked that angry, that untamed and that vicious once.

* * *

><p>Ezio stared. He would have denied it, but his denials would have been shot down. There was no way around it; he was gawking at a lithe figure that seemed to flicker between the dancers, every now and then being blessed with the sweet curve of a supple ass or a strong thigh. He would have denied the fact that he was almost drooling at the sight, being told to "shut your damn mouth" when Rosa noticed his jaw had begun to slack. He couldn't deny, however, that the youth he was unashamedly fucking with his eyes was indeed, a twenty give year old man.<p>

He moved easily, and each swift pull of the musician's violin made him sweep and twist in time, making the ladies that he guided around the floor blush and stagger in embarrassment. To be fair, he was wearing really tight breeches, and coupled with the almost fairytale-prince flouncing shirt, well. Ezio could understand all the swooning women.

And himself.

He snorted at the thought, and turned on his heel to escape the twirling dancers, and the chattering nobles. He stepped out onto the balcony, and it took all of his control to not jump the railing and agitate some guards. It would be more fun than-

"Not to your tastes, signor?"

Ezio turned, and muffled the urge to snap the hidden blade into the person's throat. It took a moment to relax, then to feel the swell of warmth in his gut. The man he had been gawking at took another step forwards, letting the patio doors slip closed. He tapped his mask with a finger, "I have never had a liking for masks and theatrics, myself." He stepped forwards until he was maybe an inch from Ezio, staring up at him with a face that begged recognition. In reality, it was smirking, in an "I know something you don't" sort of way. The curiosity laced Ezio's maw, like a fine wine. Then the man's eyes flickered under the mask.

"You are an assassino."

"Just like you, Master Ezio."

"Bastiano, is that you?"

The man smiled, and Ezio felt his head grow a little fuzzy. He had never noticed Bastiano's dimples. But when you are looking at a man deemed insane dangling a guard off a cliff face, it is something one might overlook. Ezio felt a little shamed, since he really didn't know what was under his recruit's hoods. A different name and they could slip away from him forever. Only their loyalty to him and his deeds kept them under Tiber Island's roof.

"Yes… and no."

Bastiano seemed to inch forwards. Ezio felt the air leave him. "I am Bastiano Pulci, but right now I am no assassin. I am another citizen enjoying the festivities." Ezio sighed and rubbed his beard.

"You do look rather good outside of your assassin whites, novice."

"You might too, Mastro, if you left them."

Ezio grinned, and Bastiano beamed back.

"Let go of your job tonight, Maestro. Let it go. It will be there again in the morning."


End file.
